Can you give us an overview of your role?
I currently head up the teams accountable for Business Capability and Strategy as well as Enterprise Solution Architecture. We are part of the larger Strategic Services organization at PNC. We are accountable for managing the introduction and rationalization of technology supporting our business applications. For any new proposed business solutions, we do an impact analysis to our portfolio, identifying where we have unmet gaps, overlapping solutions that need to be consolidated, as well as alignment to established strategic roadmaps. My teams also are the primary stewards and business architects on the strategic road maps that are directly in support of business strategies. To help in this, we manage to a view of our portfolio that is mapped to the BIAN landscape.
What prompted you to participate in BIAN?
I believe in BIAN’s goals to provide a framework for a “plan view”of a bank that enables service oriented architecture in an industry specific model. It aligns well to the strategic vision our organization is striving to achieve. Personally, I believe the best way to effect change is to dive in and start working. I have focused PNC’s efforts within BIAN to be in core areas where both PNC and BIAN can directly benefit from the work product. The opportunity to work with other senior and knowledgeable architects is a big bonus, as I have often gained insight and additional perspective from our peers.
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the banking industry in the next 5 years?
As FinTechs and banks with a primarily digital model come into being as the ‘digital natives’ of our industry, they are inherently part of the larger macro trends towards modular services. More established banks have their own advantages, but are finding themselves under increasing market pressure to meet the expectations for a more agile and faster adoption of the digital ecosystems in which we function. Beyond just digital channel adoption, the core way in which we work with our partners and modularize our business will require evolving past our current technology approaches which are often internally focused in the way large monolithic applications are compared to service based ecosystems that are inherently about integration. It’s also worth noting that our vendors are already moving to cloud only offerings and service models, and the banks that depend on them will have to be ready. Cloud and a service model approach are made for each other.
How would you sum up the future of banking in one word?
Financial Services Marketplace.